The Girl
by LovelyLittleFreckle
Summary: Red is injured and in the process reveals to Lizzie their connection. One shot. Some description of gore so beware if that's not your thing :)


It had been so long since she'd slept.

There were times that she could swear that she heard him stirring, rustling the scratchy blanket that had been chafing her wrist all day and night. But not once had she considered moving, because she'd hold his hand forever. He'd done the same for her. Saved her time and again like she'd saved him now. Then standing by until she was ready, holding her hand.

Hours before, she had watched Dembe's eyes fluttering closed, his blinking becoming slower and slower as the night dragged on and the monitors droned.

"Go home," she had said, kind but stern. "I've got this."

Her vigil wasn't hopeful; she didn't dare hope… but it was the only thing that interested her. She had nowhere to sleep that wasn't tainted with awful memories, no hotel that would be safe enough and when it came down to it she would only worry about him. It was best to know for sure than to drive herself crazy wondering. She had always been the type to let her mind wander into dark corners. She didn't have to dig too deep to find the root of that behavior.

The stillness of Red's face, the slackening of his jaw – it was all too much to process when she was used to seeing him so composed and confident. The crescent gash above his ear was still raw and bleeding but she couldn't bear to look at the other side of his head. She knew she would find the divot that had been left there, now kept in place with a metal plate, the result of a blow from Luther that had knocked him unconscious. In all honesty, she was surprised to find that this was the first metal plate holding his skull together. This was Raymond Reddington; this probably was not the worst of his injuries.

But it may have caused the most damage.

She had been told that he wasn't likely to remember what happened to him. He may not remember her. If he even woke up at all. But the doctor with the Irish brogue, who had been so kind to her before, assured her that neurological injuries were near impossible to predict this early. They would have to wait. And wait she did. For two days now.

When she found him, he was lying on his side, a mess of limbs and blood strewn haphazardly like he'd been dropped from the sky. She was convinced he was dead, but she wasn't about to leave him. She remembered hoisting him across her shoulders, holding one arm and one leg in a punishing grip; she was sure that she had crushed the bones in his wrist keeping him aloft. She laid him gently at the feet of waiting paramedics and felt the dull wave of shock wash over her. There were voices, sirens, questions, flashlights in her eyes, but it all ran together. All she could hear was the thrumming of her heart in her ears, and in her mouth, the metallic taste of blood.

She didn't remember how she got to the hospital, but she knew she didn't cry. She had waited to treat herself to a long sob in the last stall of the 3rd floor restroom. Crying was always cathartic for her; she enjoyed the feeling afterwards, the feeling of release, the emptiness, the raw feeling on her cheeks that let her know that she had let go of whatever was hurting. When she was old enough, she learned to control it. Keeping in the tears until she was alone. Letting them out when she needed release. She tried to comfort herself knowing that he was alive, but the memories were beyond brutal. They kept her awake, kept her crying at unpredictable and increasingly frequent intervals. She was losing control.

His knuckles were so wide that it hurt for her to intertwine her fingers with his, so she took to running her thumb across them instead. Over and over and over again. She'd memorized each bump, each tendon, each tiny scar and freckle. She barely knew the man himself, but his hands felt like an old friend to her now, so familiar and comforting. Each time his blood pressure would drop low or his oxygen saturation faltered, she would find herself clutching his hand too tightly; it would have probably driven him from his seat if he were awake.

The dream state between delusion and lucidity was always where all of her darkest memories hid. Now it was even crueler; instead of bringing to mind any number of awful memories it was now making her hallucinate. Making her believe that he was moving his hand under hers. She wanted him to wake up badly enough that the trick her mind was playing made her want to scream in frustration. How much longer would it be until she could sleep? Until she could breathe again?

Then she was sure of it. His hand gripped hers hard enough that she winced. Her eyelids snapped wide open.

"Red?" she said, jostling his hand. "Red, are you awake?"

He coughed.

And it was wonderful.

Strangely wonderful.

"You're in the hospital, don't try to get up."

He turned his head, taking in his surroundings with a grimace.

"What happened?" he asked.

"You were… attacked. Don't feel like you need to remember anything just yet, just breathe, take a minute," she said, reaching with her free hand for her cell phone. She needed to text Dembe.

"Where is she?" he said in a beleaguered, groaning whisper. "The girl, where is she?"

"Don't worry about that now," she said, continuing to search for her phone when he crushed her hand in his. He was using her as leverage to sit up.

"It's the only thing that matters," he said, lurching forward, letting go of her hand. His voice was a menacing growl. "Find her." His eyes were frantic, he was looking but he wasn't seeing. He reached for his IV.

"Red, don't! DON'T!"

She didn't have time to look away before he tugged his IV, knocked the cannula from his nose. The monitors began to wail as he worked the Velcro loose on his blood pressure cuff. He was irrational, running on adrenaline… but still weak. She placed her hand on his chest as he struggled feebly, his limbs uncoordinated and sleepy. His eyes were wild, bordering on feral, unable to focus on her. He was frantic. She spoke softly.

"Red, she's fine. The girl, she's fine." She wasn't sure what delusion he was under and she couldn't be certain which girl he was concerned with as there had been so many tragic women in his life. Either way she had to make him believe that this girl, whoever she was, was alright if he was going to keep calm. She pressed her hand over the inside of his elbow, where his IV had been, as she looked out the window for a nurse. A man in blue scrubs was rushing past the window, shaking his head.

"Not this again," the nurse muttered as he rushed to Red's side, haphazardly tossing a chart onto the bedside table and setting about preparing a new IV. "Mr. Reddington, this is Paul I am your nurse. We've gone through this a thousand times, but we will go over it again. I know you are looking for Lizzie. She is fine. We got word that she is safe. Now, please leave your IV alone, you're going to do serious damage."

Liz froze. She was the girl.

She watched the nurse breathe a sigh of relief as Red relaxed enough to hold his arm still. He repeated over and over that the girl was fine and with each mention of her name, strange on the nurse's lips, Red relaxed. The nurse placed the button for the morphine drip at Red's side after pressing the button once.

"If he does it again, just tell him that Lizzie is fine. We got his medical records from Amsterdam, Odessa, Helsinki… they all report the same thing. When he experiences any trauma that causes loss of consciousness, he wakes up asking about a girl named Lizzie. No idea who she is, she isn't on his emergency contact list… for all we know she isn't a real person. Hell, he's given about 10 different names for _himself_ over the years… but the girl is always 'Lizzie'. Social work reports that if you tell him that she's OK, he'll calm down. Then when he's lucid, he'll deny every saying anything about her."

Liz thanked him, still unable to think. She felt like her brain was being asked to sprint through lead.

Slowly, she took her seat next to Red again, his eyes clouded with morphine, unfocused and gazing out the window.

"Red?" she asked.

"Yes?" he answered, not looking away from the window.

"Who is Lizzie?" She felt bad, momentarily, about manipulating him when he was barely conscious but she wasn't thinking straight.

"She is…" he started, even in his stupor, taking a moment to lick his lips thoughtfully. "She was a girl. In a fire."

"How do you know her?"

"The fire," he said still staring blankly, his speech slurred. He started to move his hands toward each other, stopping about six inches apart. "She had… a… uh…"

"A teddy bear," Liz whispered, almost involuntarily.

"Yes."

Liz felt her eyes sting with tears, the tactile delusion of her teddy bear's singed fur under her fingers… the smell of fire that was still buried in his fluff, the strange way it comforted her. Her pulse raced. She felt naked, confused.

"Were you there?" she asked, her voice strangled.

"I was there. They… they set fire to her house but they didn't know. I didn't know." His tongue sounded like it was getting in the way of his words.

"You didn't know what?" she asked, frantic now to get the answers she needed before whatever spell this was decided to break.

"Didn't know about her," his voice wavered though his voice was as clear as it had been since the morphine, his lips turning down slightly in the corners under the weight of tears. "They didn't know. But I heard her. I watched her… fall. Her little hand…" he said, touching his wrist.

"What did you do?" she whispered.

"I ran. I fell, but I… ran." He squinted thoughtfully, almost like he saw something. "I put her on my shoulders and I ran. Until I couldn't anymore. But then some more. To Sam."

"Why do you worry about her? Why do you ask about her?"

"Because she," he said, pausing again, turning to look at Liz with bleary eyes. "She is the last good thing. The last good thing I did. And she was brilliant even then." There was an anger in his eyes now. "It's what made her a target. She and her father, it was that gene. The project. They wanted her."

A recent case passed through her mind.

"Subproject Seven," she said more than asked.

"Yes, both of them. Him the most, but her… smart, powerful when she was angry, even that small. They knew. They took him but they couldn't have her. I wouldn't let them. They couldn't have her too." His speech was choppy, strange. She was used to his eloquence, but he sounded like a living nightmare.

"Who were they after?" he asked.

"Her father," he said, tears pooling in his eyes. "My family too. They killed them. Tried to trigger me, activate me. And they did. But they couldn't do it to her. They took the wrong one, they were meant to kill her, leaving her father to become their asset… but they did the opposite. And there was still hope for her. When there wasn't any left for me."

"So my father was the target? They tried to kill me to activate him? Like they killed your family to activate you?"

His eyes began to focus on her. She reached her hand out to him, placing his fingers over her wrist.

"It's me, Red." She felt him run is fingers over her scar. "I'm Lizzie. I'm fine. You know me now, we're partners."

"Partners?"

"You work with me. You help me catch criminals." She tried to keep her answers short, easy to digest. But all she wanted to do was tell him everything. That they had brought down people who had been responsible for what had happened to the two of them. They wiped out the people who would harm the innocent, children… many of them. But the time to tell him about all of it would come. At this rate he'd remember on his own.

"_I'm_ the criminal, Lizzie."

"You were, Red."

He smiled, his sardonic humor bursting forward in a chuckle.

"Just like there is no such thing as an ex-Marine, there is no such thing as an ex-criminal."

Liz relaxed at the sound of a familiar cadence coming back to his voice, a clarity of thought. Eventually she would process what she'd just learned, but she was beginning to feel like she'd known it all along. But now she needed to sleep. Now that she'd seen him awake, she would relax enough to let her eyes close and her mind wander.

"Well, I'm fine. You're fine," she said, taking his hand again and settling into the squeaking vinyl of the hospital chair. "Get some rest. We can talk more about this later."

"Are you tucking me in?" Red asked. "Because it sounds like you are."

"Yes. I am. Go to sleep," she said, smiling.

"How about a song?" he asked. Though her eyes were closed she could hear the smile in his voice.

"I don't sing."

He sighed. Sneaking a peek in his direction, she saw that his eyes were closed and his lips were upturned. As her breathing slowed, she entered that dream-like trance that was so familiar and fraught. But this time, breaking through the fog, she heard a low voice humming song.

Her song.

The Anniversary Waltz.

And she knew it was him.


End file.
